


Awake

by Arianne



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe didn't tell him he would hallu-- halluci-- see things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wasuremono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/gifts).



> MAJOR SPOILERS for an event between the second and third bosses in the sixth sector. If you've met the third boss in that sector, you're safe.
> 
> There is some reference to medical situations and unpleasantness, though it isn't very explicit.

Zoe didn't tell him he would hallu-- halluci-- see things.

She said he'd sleep. But he's awake. And that it wouldn't hurt. But it did. It hurt when she stuck him with the needles, and when she cut him with her scalpel, and when she put her things inside the cuts she made. And then when she was finishing, it hurt. He moved. She acted angry at him. Maebe stuck a needle deep in his hand. It burned, and then he couldn't move anymore again. Then she put this mask on him. It took all the pain away. But it's making him see things. Hallucinate. It's making him hallucinate.

He knows because there's a nurse looking at his chart right now. But there aren't any blonde nurses here. He knows them. There was one on the Blue Jet. None here.

But he can see her in the corner. She's standing on the far edge of his bed. And she can't be crew. Her hair is so long, and she doesn't have a mask or gloves, and she's wearing a dress. The other crew and Zoe were wearing their Demonica suits. They wouldn't tell him why.

The nurse looks up and smiles. It makes Jimenez feel weird, to be dreaming like this. Then she plucks the mask right off his face.

"Good morning, Jimenez. Will you let me take a look at you?"

"Wh- Wh--" he tries to say. She knows his name. He can't move enough. But he wants to. He wants to know who she is. His lips won't curl enough to make the sound.

"Shh," she says. She puts her index finger on his lips until he stops trying. She turns and he can finally see all of her. Her hair. Her makeup. How low her dress goes in the front.

Zoe didn't tell him he'd hallucinate, and now he's dreaming of a hot nurse. He's never -- maybe once -- but not like this. Maybe the drugs in the mask did make him sleep. She doesn't feel right. Maybe he'll come to soon.

"Very good," she says, tapping her finger on his lips and then taking her hand away. "My name is Louisa Ferre. I would like to examine you, free from these trappings." He thinks he knows what she's talking about, even without his mask on. He hasn't moved for hours except that twitch during the surgery. Even when they took him from the operating tale to this recovery bed, they carried him, and set him up here. He's glad they put him on his side so he can see himself. At least he can blink his eyes again now, and Maebe hasn't come by to put drops in them like she had to at first.

"Now, why can't you move? They haven't kept you unconscious, or even bound you... ah." She's glancing back at his charts, then at the armrest where they laid his hand, with the needle and the little hard plastic tube that's dripping into it. She peers at the little white label Maebe stuck on the rig, and shakes her head. "My, my. This is a strong paralytic for my kind. Did they synthesize this just for you?"

Jimenez gets his mouth open, but no sound comes out. He wants to say yes, or ask what she means by her kind, or just yell. He heard them talking about all this during his surgery.

"I recognize the formula. Your strike team invaded Mitra's palace... did you find it there? Well done." While she's talking she's patting his hand with her cold fingers. Zoe did that, too, but she was nervous, not comforting. The nurse -- Louisa -- isn't rough, but she makes the needle shift around inside his skin. It aches. Starting at the sharp end, she strokes it with her fingertip, pulling the thin layer of skin covering it. He feels like he should shiver, but he just feels prickly up his spine. And then she peels off the tape holding it on, which only barely pulls at his hand -- it's his left, the one that's Bugaboo's, that's in gauze the color of old blood wrapped over dry skin and is tender and doesn't have any hair to pull and sting as she does it.

She finally grasps the plastic piece and the paper tape sticking it on, and he can feel the soreness of the metal sliding right out of his vein. "Nasty substance," Louisa remarks, setting all the parts aside on a table with the shiny wrappers of the bandages and instruments Zoe didn't have to use. "My Mitra can be truly cruel. That feels better, doesn't it? Soon you'll be able to move again." She closes her hand around his shoulder, and Jimenez lets her help him lower him to his back. Or he would let her, if he could. He's still feeling like she's wrong, but she's being nice to him, whatever she's talking about, and she's the best view he's seen in here.

"Wh- why?" he manages. It's better, but it's still hard to round his mouth, and even to him it sounds wrong.

"Why have they done this to you?" Louisa smiles, taking the edge of the scratchy paper sheet Maebe put over him in her fingers. He can hear it crackle as she folds it back, exposing him slowly. He can't see himself anymore. He can see the ceiling, and the top of the door frame, and a few of the scanning devices. If he looks high enough he can see Louisa, looking down upon him with her eyes gleaming, and the LED lamp behind her makes her so bright he has to blink his eyes. "They think you're so dangerous. Would you like to know what I think?"

"Yeah." Less about drugs and Mitra making his skin crawl, more about her. Any guy would want that, even a messed up guy like him.

"I think you're beautiful." As soon as she says it, she's touching him, draping her arms over his shoulders and dragging her fingertips and short nails over his pecs down to his belly, aching just a bit when she pulls on the rubber tubing of the emergency central IV she left in his neck. He wants to shiver again, and he's not sure if it's because she's exposed him to the waist and the room is cold, or just because he's being touched by a chick. Who is a hot nurse. Who is probably his fantasy, since she's flattering him now. Who -- is still giving him an awful feeling. He thinks. They're instincts he's never had before. But they're all telling him this is wrong, fighting against the human who just wants to _know_. He wants to move, and if he can't do that, then he wants Zoe.

"Zoe?" he calls. It almost comes out right. "Maebe?"

"No," she says. She's still touching him, and either because he likes it or it's horrible, it makes him want to squirm. "Do you know what they're doing now?"

"No." He hasn't seen Zoe since the surgery, however many hours ago that was now, and Maebe only came in those few times for his vitals and the eyedropper.

"They're deciding how to keep you."

"Said," and the words are still tough but he's forcing them out, insistent, "better in... few hours." He thinks that's what they said. The surgery is getting harder to recall, when a few minutes ago he could remember every cut Zoe made and even the songs she'd wired her Demonica to play while she worked.

"You'll have recovered in a few hours from this torturous surgery they've put you through, yes."

"No," Jimenez chokes out. He can shiver now, a little bit in his neck, and he does. He realizes he was trying to clench his left hand and manages to twitch it. It's sore.

"Yes," Louisa says -- fucking sing-songs -- back. "It's to torture you. The humans did it to you before, don't you remember?" Louisa strolls around to his side, still leaning over enough that he can see her face. She strokes his jawline on the left side, and he jerks back.

"Am I too cold?" Louisa asks idly. She doesn't stop, so Jimenez squares his jaw. He doesn't like this, but then he considers showing any sort of weakness in front of her and it makes the whole of him want to be sick more than even Mitra's drugs did back when he was only Boo. She's a dream, he reminds himself. A fantasy. Maybe he just has to impress her. Yeah.

"Look at what they've done to you already," she says, less of a lament than a praise. Jimenez watches her flicking her eyes to soak in every bit of skin she can see, and -- shit, tracing her fingertips over his fusion scars. She bends over at the waist, resting her elbows on the table, and settles her hands on the bit of demon skin that ended up on his flank and hip. It isn't at all like Zoe and Maebe touching him like those parts were made of glass, like the left side of his face is somehow wrong and not just as much a part of him as the right. So Jimenez lets her do it, or would, but it doesn't even feel like that's his decision to make.

"Tell me how you acquired this form," she demands. He doesn't know why his hallucination would make him even think about that.

"It felt," like every limb ripping apart, and he had to beg for it, was so close to -- he can't do this. He can't talk about it. He hasn't mastered the instincts at all yet and they're telling him _no_. He can't speak and can't move and _who the hell is this woman_ and she shouldn't be so close, shouldn't be touching him at all and should never be climbing onto his little recovery bed and holding him to her chest even if -- even if it's making him feel better.

"Hurt," Jimenez manages to think. "It felt like--"

"What?" Louisa encourages him, stroking his hair like he's a pet but God damn it, it works.

"Like -- in the palace. Before Jimenez saved Bugaboo." It feels awkward to say that, but he doesn't know now else to talk ab out himself now. "Before I saved myself."

Louisa hums at him softly. He can feel it in his head where she's got him resting it on her chest, and it makes the demon in him feel so warm. "That is the strength of which my kind is capable, when faced with the deeds humans perform upon the demons they claim to hire, or even subjugate." She tsks, like she's talking about bratty kids and not... sadists. Yeah. It's what those scientists on Jack's squad were. "And now they've done it again, with their operation."

"This was for my health," Jimenez says. He gets the words out slow, but it sounds clear even to his ears.

"They didn't anesthetize you correctly," Louisa presses.

"They tried," he says, parroting Zoe's words to him, but it falls flat.

"Why should we believe that?"

"They wouldn't do that."

Louisa turns her gaze back up to the ceiling, almost wistful. Jimenez can feel it. "This ship is falling under the command of that woman who calls herself angel of the Lord, whose immense cruelty shines upon any being who might fall beyond His order. Even I cannot protect you from that."

She's stroking him again, down the sides of his abdoment this time in a way that should make him just curl up because it's too much. Or was it always one of his sensitive spots? Did Boo like it when Jimenez rubbed him there? He can't remember, and he barely had a minute to identify himself again before they brought him here for his physical -- to make sure he came through the fusion okay, they claimed -- and everything after that is fading into big, abstract shades of memory the longer he tries to pin them down. He suddenly longs to be up, moving, _doing_. He didn't know it'd take this long.

"I can only wonder if they've finished. What else can they learn from your body? Will your opponent challenge you herself, or will she have learned to rival you in cowardice like her patron?" She spits out the last parts, her bitterness nearly a physical force. Jimenez isn't even 100% on who she's talking about, but he has an idea.

"Zelenin."

Louisa doesn't affirm it. "Look at yourself. Or can you? They want to keep you like this, paralyzed and unaware. And why? Because they are afraid of you. But I only want to help you. What is your choice? The woman wishes you to live in blind obedience to the Great Will. But it is His beloved humans who have tortured and bound you here, neutered. Shouldn't you awaken to your true power? Don't you want to feel your strength once more?"

"Yeah," Jimenez admits without thinking. No use lying about it -- even if he himself didn't now he wanted it so much until this very moment. But now he can feel it. He's pretty sure he could've ripped Captain Jack Shit in half, and what he _did_ do to him wasn't even enough. And it's -- it's only all the others who have told him that's wrong. Everything inside him either doesn't care, or wants it, or _needs_ it. "Yeah. I do."

"So do I," Louisa purrs. She climbs off his bed and back onto her feet next to him. He manages not to reach out after her like some small part of him wants to. He can turn his neck now, though, and does. He's not sure what this is -- it stopped seeming anything like a hallucination at some point that he can't pin down -- but he can see her smile now. It's cold, but it soothes part of him he didn't know was tense, and for no good reason except that she seems to know what's best for him. She didn't even have to say so.

"You know now," she's telling him. "They will contain you."

"Cold sleep," Jimenez says. He knows that's what's coming, even if he didn't hear all of the discussion about it when Maebe and Zoe and even he thought he was out of his mind. He can feel it. Instinct again, maybe. He could get used to this.

"I will not free you yet. I will merely help you along that path."

"And then what?"

"Leave this ship. Fight for me and our race."

Our race. Not just hers. It's more than he's getting here. More than he's getting from the humans who want to keep him in a cage and judge him like he's a monster.

"Yeah, Okay."

She leans in close and lifts his head, cupping the base of his skull easily in her hand, and Jimenez doesn't know whether to prepare himself for a kiss or a strike, and tenses either way. She only straps the plastic surgical mask back to his face, covering half of it. Jimenez is proud when he manages to stay mostly calm.

"I must put you back into that infantile state to hide you. Shh. This is oxygen." Louisa says, shushing him out of the protests that he's proud are so faint. He trusts her, he thinks. She turns around, and then he recognizes the little sucking sound of a syringe being drawn full. "And this will wear off more quickly than their dose. I know the compounds. I've spent time under Mitra myself. Watch the minutes."

He gets it, as he watches her fingers manipulate the syringe and depress it into the central line that's still in him. Maybe he'll be out when Maebe brings him lunch, but it'll wear off before it's time for them to knock him out again for cold sleep, and that's his shot. How much of this will he remember, he wonders? How will he know what to do when he gets out? She didn't put the needle back in his hand -- won't they noticed that he's moved from before and if they do, what is he supposed to do to them? He reaches out and grabs Louisa around her arm, and can still do it without any trouble. She shakes him off entirely too easily, smiling.

"Stay strong," is the last thing he hears from her before he starts to feel himself drifting into another drug-induced dream, and he's sure as shit that when he's awake? By his will, he's going to.

**Author's Note:**

> To my recipient: Thanks for your request! I'd had a version of this idea kicking around in my head for literally months, wanting to write it and never quite being able to for an unidentified reason. It started off as deeply creepy, drugged dubcon with somewhat of a downer ending. After I saw your prompts, I reconsidered it as slightly more optimistic (in a sense) gen instead, more about the characters, about Louisa's machinations and Jimenez setting into his skins and his place as a new man in the new world -- and it worked out great. One thing I really loved about this event in the game and its aftermath was how well Jimenez took his fusion, even moreso considering I was horrified. I had fun playing with his positive attitude here, and how Louisa would want to play with it too (for her own benefit, of course).


End file.
